作者：Christian Nutt

King的手机休闲游戏《Candy Crush Saga》太火了，因此已经不需要对它多作介绍了。

这么简单的游戏却获得了巨大成功，让人忍不住妒忌地怀疑它的成功只是侥幸。然而，如果你这么想那就太愚蠢了。因为这个工作室屡获成功，必定有些过人之处……那么，是什么呢？

King的游戏开发有什么指导原则？最近，我们前往该公司所在地瑞典的首都斯德哥尔摩，寻找答案。

Candy Crush Saga(from play.google.com)

玩游戏是让人放松的

大多数游戏开发者都是狂热的玩家，他们看待游戏的方式与主流玩家非常不同。King的员工也不例外——但他们更了解玩家想要什么样的游戏。根据该公司的创意总监Sebastian Knutsson所述，应该把游戏体验的长度控制在2到4分钟。

当然这还不够。除了核心游戏通常唤起的沉浸感，玩家还有其他期待。之所以把游戏回合控制在较短的时间内，是因为：“手机游戏不能像下象棋那样，走一步就要思考几分钟”，玩手机游戏应该是玩家“不用想太多、只管放松”的时刻。

不怕失败

King的首席制作人Kim Nordstrom表示，当开发新项目时，“我们可以冒险，失败了也没关系。”他们不怕冒险，部分是因为他们对犯错的态度（意识到犯错是无所谓的），部分是因为开发手机游戏本身的优势：游戏可以快速修改。

Nordstrom曾供职于Sony，他热情地解释了手机游戏使开发者得以迅速修改错误，接收玩家反馈并响应。

Nordstrom解释道：“如果有问题，我们就修改——如果可以修改的话。有错误，我们道歉并改正。我们倾听玩家的意见，考虑这是不是他们想要的，对我们来说合不合理。”

倾听玩家的意见

正如Nordstrom所说的，你必须倾听玩家。有时候，这甚至意味着在违背自己的设计意愿。

举个例子：Philip Lanik是《Candy Crush Saga》的开发者，他一直想在游戏中加入一个跳过关卡的选项，因为许多玩家卡在某个关卡中过不去。

然而结果却是，玩家并不想要这种选项。Lanik指出：“这个话题我们讨论得非常激烈。我们想挑战玩家。我们自己就是玩家。我们听从玩家的意愿，他们认为跳过关卡是一种作弊。”

Lanik表示：“老实说我个人非常中意跳过关卡的选项，但我可以会被团队反驳”，因为我们的团队知道要听玩家的意见。

人人都有发言权

Lanik的意见可能时时被团队反驳，但根据《Farm Heroes Saga》的制作人、供职于King英国工作室的Carolin Krenzer反映，他仍然有发言权。每个人都有发言权。

当King的英国工作室成立时，创始人研究了斯德哥尔摩工作室的工作方式，之后把那边的公司文化带到英国工作室：“我们知道那种工作方式很管用，那种公司文化使员工保持创造力，不断做出好游戏。那正是我们向斯德哥尔摩工作室学习的原因之一。”

Krenzer表示：“确保所有人都有发言权，有帮助，有主人翁精神，这对产品的品质具有重大影响。”她曾供职于不同的休闲游戏开发工作室，但没有一家实施与King的相同的政策。显然，她认为这种差异是显著又关键的。

倾听每个人的声音非常重要，特别是当团队比较小时。《Candy Crush Saga》的产品经理Tobias Nyblom指出，该公司在内部“集思广议”，以收集大量关卡设计想法，然后执行其中最优秀的几个。

保持挑战性

考虑到《Candy Crush Saga》的玩家那么多，你可能会觉得这款游戏要保持人气是很简单的事。根据开发者Philip Lanik所言，事实却是相反的：《Candy Crush Saga》“必须保持挑战性”。

那就是为什么它的开发团队必须在内部不断地寻找新创意。如果他们不能想出新的挑战，游戏就会变得无聊。“一直玩相同的内容，很快就会厌烦的。游戏必须有挑战性，且是有趣的挑战性。”

确实，有时候某些关卡对某些玩家来说太难了，那是不可避免的。Lanik认为：“有些关卡会导致一些玩家流失，这也是我们必须接受的现实。”

你不可能取悦所有人

流失玩家？真的没关系吗？是的——因为你不可能一直取悦所有人。

Lanik还指出，当制作《Candy Crush Saga》这样的游戏时，“你不可能找到适用于所有玩家的正确的解决办法。我们认为寻找平衡点是非常非常困难的。”开发团队只能尽力而为，然后接受仍然不能顾全所有人的现实。

Lanik强调道：“我想看到所有人都能进展游戏，但因为玩家这么多，这是不可能的。保持乐趣和挑战之间的平衡是很难的。所以必须恰当地混合不同的难度和风格。”

第一玩家是我们自己

游戏的好想法是自己想出来的。King的伦敦工作室的开发者Ceri Llewellyn正在制作一款还没发行的游戏，他表示，你必须相信自己：“如果你觉得有趣，一般来说别人也会觉得有趣。”

“是的，你可以想象你做的游戏是针对什么样的玩家，但第一玩家通常就是我们自己。”其实他的游戏在King的内部游戏开发比赛中获过奖——其他人很喜欢他的游戏，所以就做成原型，又开发了成品。如果没有King的内部开发者们的认可，那款游戏本不可能有机会成为现实。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The processes behind King’s Candy Crush

By Christian Nutt

Candy Crush Saga is so huge, at this point, that it requires no introduction. If you want one, this bizarre Fox News segment will tell you everything you need to know about how far it has seeped into the popular consciousness.

It’s easy — and foolish, and cynical — to assume that this kind of success is some kind of fluke, or that mainstream players don’t know any better than to engage with King’s games. The company has found repeated success, so it must be doing something right… but what?

What principles help guide King’s game development? Recently, Gamasutra traveled to the company’s Stockholm, Sweden headquarters to find out.

A Pause to Relax

Most game developers are avid players, and look at games quite differently from mainstream audiences. King’s developers are no different — but they also understand, first and foremost, what players want from their games. According to the company’s chief creative officer, Sebastian Knutsson, that’s “bitesize” two- to four-minute experiences.

It doesn’t end there, though. Players of its games have a different expectation than the sort of immersion and engagement routinely evoked by core games. That short gameplay segment serves a purpose: “It’s not about a chess move where you spend four minutes thinking,” says Knutsson. It’s a moment or two where you can “relax without thinking hard.”

It’s Okay to Fail

Kim Nordstrom, lead producer at King’s Malmo, Sweden studio says that when developing new titles, “we can take the risk and it’s okay to fail.” Part of that is attitude (realizing it’s okay to make mistakes) and part of this is the advantage of mobile: Games can be fixed quickly.

Nordstrom used to work for Sony, and he spoke enthusiastically about the way in which the mobile space allows developers to fix their mistakes quick, and take in player feedback and act on it.

“It didn’t work, and we fix it — and hopefully we can fix it,” says Nordstrom. “We apologize and we fix it. We listen to the audience, and say, ‘Okay, this is what they want. This makes sense for us.’”
When to Listen to the Audience

As Nordstrom says, you have to listen to your audience. And sometimes this even means going against your own instincts when it comes to how you design your games.

One example: Philip Lanik, game developer on Candy Crush Saga at King’s Stockholm studio, has long wanted to put in a level skip option, because many players get stuck on more challenging stages.

It turns out that the players don’t want it, however. “That’s a very hotly discussed topic… We want to challenge players. We are all players ourselves,” says Lanik. “We listen to our players… people feel like it’s cheating.”

Given that’s the case, well, “skipping levels, I’d love to have it, honestly, but I’d probably get overruled by the team,” Lanik says. The team knows to listen to its audience.

Everybody Has a Say

Lanik might get overruled by his team now and again, but according to Farm Heroes Saga producer Carolin Krenzer, from King’s London studio, he should still get his say. Everyone should.

When the London studio was formed, its founders studied how things worked in Stockholm and then brought that culture to the UK: “We know that it works pretty well here, that the culture allowed people to be creative and create awesome games, and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to make sure we learned from the people in Stockholm,” she says.

“Making sure everyone has a say and can contribute, and having ownership, it has a massive impact on the quality of the product,” says Krenzer. She used to work at a different casual game developer that didn’t have the same policy, and it’s clear that she finds the difference both stark and crucial.

Listening to everyone’s voice is particularly essential when game teams are small. Tobias Nyblom, product manager on Candy Crush Saga, notes that the company “used crowdsourcing within the office to come up with lots of ideas for the levels, and tried to cherry-pick the best ones for a varied flow.”

Staying Challenging

Given the mass audience for Candy Crush Saga, you might expect that the game would be a cake walk. According to developer Philip Lanik, the opposite is true: Candy Crush Saga “has to be a challenge and stay a challenge.”

That’s why the team needs to constantly seek new ideas from around the office. If they don’t devise new types of challenges for players, the game will become dull: “playing all the time the same content is getting quite boring,” says Lanik. “It has to be a challenge; it has to be a fun challenge,” he says.

And yes, sometimes those levels are too tough for some players. That is inevitable, says Lanik: “We have to accept we’re losing people in some levels as well.”

You Can’t Please Everybody

Losing players? Is it really okay? Yes — because you can’t please all the people all of the time.

Lanik also notes that when making a game like Candy Crush Saga, “you’ll never find the right solution” for all of the players. “To find the balance is a really, really tough problem for us,” he says. The team can only do its best, and accept that there’s a limit to that.

“I’d like to see all the people progressing [through the game] in the same way, but with so many people you’ll never see it,” says Lanik. “The balance between fun levels and challenging levels, it’s quite hard. A good mixture of different levels and different styles is very important.”

The First User is Us

Great ideas for games come from within, not without. Ceri Llewellyn, a developer at King’s London studio working on a yet-to-be-released title, says you have to trust yourself: “if you find it fun, generally people find it fun.”

“Yes, you can think about this mythical person you can build for,” says Llewellyn, but “the first user is generally us.” In fact, his game was the winner of an internal King game jam — people liked it so much that it was developed into a prototype and from there, into a full version. Without that seal of approval from King’s internal developers, it never would have had a chance to make it into the wild.(source:gamasutra)